The faux independence of resource-rich Muslim Kosovo symbolises the resurgence of old nineteenth century Western imperialism. The strategy is reminiscent of the ?coloured? revolutions in former Soviet Republics, and some actors are the same. There are salutary lessons for all non-Western nations from this latest assault on international law.
Kosovo has become a Euro-American protectorate (read colony). As Australia exploits the oilfields of East Timor, carved out of Indonesia in 1999, so the wealth of Kosovo shall be enjoyed by Euro-American multinationals. The trouble began in the early 1990s when the fall of the Soviet Union triggered a Euro-American drive to dismember Yugoslavia. In 1991, while the bombing of Iraq grabbed world attention, America sponsored separatist movements in the Yugoslav republics of Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia; imposed crippling economic sanctions on Yugoslavia, and pushed NATO forces into the region.
US also started arming the right-wing UCK movement in Kosovo, though the latter was not a Yugoslav republic, but part of the Serbian Republic and civilisational fountainhead of Serbia. It has a large Albanian Muslim population, a relic of Ottoman rule. Washington's?free press? played ball with the Clinton Administration, carrying grisly tales of Serbian genocide against Albanians in Kosovo. American officials claimed 100,000 to 500,000 Albanians were butchered by Serbia. There were reports of mass graves, reminiscent of Saddam Hussein'sweapons of mass destruction.
As angry Serbia resisted Western pressures, American aggression began. After 78 days of intensive bombings, including the use of thousands of radioactive depleted-uranium bombs, and immeasurable damage to civilian and industrial targets, a besieged Yugoslavia crumbled. On June 3, 1999, NATO occupied Kosovo. President Slobodan Milosevic was captured and tried for crimes against humanity at The Hague, where he died in March 2006, supposedly of a heart attack.
Serbians question the verdict, with some justice. As the forensic teams of 17 NATO countries set up by the Hague Tribunal on War Crimes arrived, American lies were soon exposed. The officials could unearth only 2,108 bodies in Kosovo?these belonged to all nationalities, and most were victims of NATO bombing; some fell to the war between UCK and Serbian authorities. Much like Saddam Hussein'sphantom weapons of mass destruction, the teams could not find even one mass grave, much less evidence of ?genocide.? The report of the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Carla Del Ponte, was played down by a complicit American media.
I may mention as an aside that it was precisely the absence of dead bodies, especially butchered bodies, that discredited the colonial doctrine of the Aryan Invasion of India and massacre of ethnic ?dasyus?, who were metamorphosed into south Indian Dravidians.
Anyway, Kosovo'sWestern invaders were unabashed and placed her under a UN Mission in 1999, under Security Council Resolution 1244. In reality, power vested with the Mission of the European Union (EU). NATO was security guarantor, and under its watch, there was a hideous ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Romas (gypsies); over 250,000 Serbs, Romas and other groups fled. Even Albanian Muslims had to flee, as nine years of NATO rule led to 60 per cent unemployment and degraded the region into a cesspool of the international drug and prostitution trade.
The poverty was confined to Kosovars. Its rich industrial resources were forcibly privatised and sold to giant Western multinationals. Halliburton, favourite corporate of the Bush Administration, took over the strategic oil and transportation lines of the entire region along with the security of Camp Bondsteel, the largest American military base in Europe.
So how did this twenty-first century colonial enterprise succeed? The UN helped. In June 2005, the then Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed former Finnish President Marti Ahtisaari as special envoy to negotiate Kosovo'sfinal status. Like many Euro-American politicians, he too had multiple identities and loyalties.
Ahtisaari was simultaneously the Chairman Emeritus of the International Crisis Group (ICG), a private body promoted by multi-billionaire George Soros, who via Karl Popper'sOpen Society Institute played a stellar role in the coloured revolutions in the former Soviet Baltic Republics. The ICG peddles NATO intervention and open markets for the US and EU; in other words, it steals the sovereign wealth of weak nations for Western corporates. The ICG connection with American politics is evident from the presence on its Board of two key officials complicit in bombing Kosovo?Gen. Wesley Clark and Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Coming from this background, Ahtisaari gave a predictably slanted Comprehensive Proposal for Kosovo Status Settlement to the new UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in March 2007. It proposed an International Civilian Representative (read viceroy) to be appointed by the US-EU to oversee Kosovo, with the power to overrule any actions or annul any laws by local authorities. The ICR would control Customs, Taxation, Treasury and Banking. Then, the EU would set up a European Security and Defence Policy Mission (ESDP) and NATO an International Military Presence. These will control foreign policy, security, police, judiciary, all courts and prisons. If this is independence, what is slavery?
Russia has rightly pointed out that UN Security Council Resolution 1244 kept Kosovo firmly in Serbia. Kosovo'sguided independence reinforces the humiliation of the Islamic world by Western Christian nations and takes Europe back (this time aided by US muscle) to treacherous terrain in the Balkans. The stage is being set for a fresh international denouement.
